


Seeing Alan

by FabulaRasa



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-09
Updated: 2010-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short piece. How does Alan see his sons, and what does he see?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeing Alan

** Don **

He opened the door and found his father bent over something on the dining room table. "Charlie home?" he asked, and his dad glanced up, then went back to what he was looking at. His reading glasses were perched on the tip of his nose.

"No, don't think so. He called, said he would be held up tonight—some kind of meeting with Larry. Come here, I want to ask your opinion about something."

Don hung his coat and walked over to the table. "Yeah? What're you looking at?"

"Books." His father waved his hand. "You remember our trip to Europe?"

Don walked through to the kitchen for a beer. "Well," he said, "I don't actually remember it since I didn't go, but I remember you and Mom went, yeah."

"Ah, still bitter about that, are you. Well, some trips are not for kids."

He popped the top of the beer. "I was twenty-three, but okay."

"Old enough to buy your own plane ticket then." His father peered at him over the glasses. "Listen. Your mother and I had been apart for almost three years, while Charlie was at Princeton. You don't think that was hard?"

He remembered a long-ago conversation, and Charlie asking the same thing. "Sure," he said. "Of course it was. I remember. I was just kidding."

"So we went to Europe that fall, once Charlie was back at Princeton and starting his Master's, and you were in Stockton. We got these books before we went." He gestured at the coffee-table art books spread out on the table. "Your mother was the art history buff. Had our itinerary all planned out, every major European museum, she practically had the floors all mapped out, knew every single painting she wanted to see. She loved art. You and your mother, you were so alike. All those art history classes you took at USC, that made her so happy. Told everyone you were an art history major."

"I was, for a few weeks."

"When you were little, she used to read aloud to you from her art books at night, do you remember that? Other people read story books. She would get the art books, and you would ask her to make up stories from the pictures and tell them to you. What's this one say, you used to ask her. Bet you don't remember that."

"I remember," Don said. He wished his Dad would stop.

"This." His father tapped a page. "Take a look. You recognize this?"

Don shrugged. "It's Rembrandt. One of the early portraits? A miniature, definitely."

"Yep. Now look at this." His father tugged one of the books out from underneath and opened it up to a marked page. It was one of those glossy fold-out pages of the Sistine Chapel. The roiling fleshy sweep of bodies and color spilled out onto the table. Don smiled; no matter how many times you looked at it, it did things to you.

"Which is better?" his father asked.

"Which what?"

His father poked at the pictures with his glasses. "The Rembrandt miniature, or the Sistine Chapel. Which is better art?"

"Well. . . Dad, that's not really the way it works."

"There you go, sounding like your mother. Why not? They're both art. They're both good, sure, but one is bound to be better than the other. Which do you think?"

"Dad." He sighed, and bent to the books, careful to set his beer out of the way. "Look. If you had a magnifying glass, this reproduction, I don't know, you might be able to see the size of Michelangelo's brushstrokes here. It's amazing, it's expansive, it's—well, if you had the same magnifying glass and you looked at the Rembrandt, you could barely even see the strokes, because he was working in such a small space, and even though it's not as flashy as the Sistine Chapel ceiling, sure, it's every bit as brilliant. It's just—each is perfectly designed for the space they were created to be in, is all. Not better. Just different."

His father wasn't looking at the books any more, just at him. There was something in his eyes it was hard to look at. "Exactly," his father said. He smiled at him, as though his point had just been made. Don frowned.

"I don't. . ."

"Let's get cleaned up for supper," his father said, and closed the books. Don sighed, because every damn time he fell for it. Every damn time.

* * *

** Charlie **

He hadn't meant to be that careless, of course, and they would never talk about it.

It was just that Don was so tired, so exhausted. The raid had gone terribly, horrendously wrong, and even though none of it had been Don's fault – an agent who rushed on the count, hadn't cleared a room, and had taken three rounds in the leg because of it – Don had still been the one to get his ass chewed. The last thing he had needed tonight was to talk about work, so they watched the game over Chinese take-out and seven or eight beers, and Don had stretched out on the sofa and kicked off his shoes, and Charlie had scooted obligingly down a bit so Don could rest his head on Charlie's lap. In six and a half minutes, Don was sound asleep.

Charlie watched the rest of the game absently, not really caring about it, but not willing to change the channel or turn it off – the shift in sound might wake Don. Charlie drank his beer slowly, and stroked the top of Don's head. He would be needing a haircut soon; already there was a bit of Eppesian curl to the growth behind his ear, and Don hated that. He wasn't afraid that he would wake him up; Don was used to Charlie touching him in his sleep, and would even lean into it now, like a sated cat.

The last thing Charlie had meant to do was fall asleep himself, with his head tipped back against the sofa. His head came up with a jerk when he heard the slow creak of the door, and his father's step. There was still time, a crucial half-second when he could have shifted out from under Don and risen from the sofa, and his dad could have glanced at Don, and Charlie could have said _yeah, rough day, let him sleep._ But he didn't.

His father's eyes met his, and Charlie looked at him but didn't move. He saw the scene as his father saw it—the beer, the take-out boxes, the kicked-off shoes. Don's head in Charlie's lap, Don curled into Charlie's body, Charlie's hand on Don's shoulder. Brotherly, but only just. Maybe. Charlie sat still, and met his father's eyes back, and then there were footsteps going into the kitchen. He heard his father go up the back stairs.

He hadn't meant to be that careless. They would never talk about it.


End file.
